Mark Sapiro writes:
On 5/25/22 19:32, Mark Dale via Mailman-Users wrote:
Before I go down this rabbit hole: was there any particular reason (back in the day) that Pipermail was favoured (and implemented) over MHonArc.
Mailman was initially implemented by John Viega in the mid 1990s to manage a mailing list for fans of the Dave Mathews Band. I don't know why pipermail was chosen, but MHonArc was fairly new at that time and pipermail was probably more mature.
I doubt that Hypermail (the original code) was more mature than MHonArc, but it was written in Python and so considered more appropriate for bundling with Mailman. "Batteries included" has always been a goal for Python, and Mailman inherited it. MHonArc is a Perl script, written in an idiosyncratic style (so I was told by a Perlmonger), and I myself would have to punt on most maintenance questions for MHonArc despite admining lists using it for a decade.
I can't speak for other members of the team, they may be more capable with Perl than I am. But to me, this would be the main issue with using MHonArc -- you'd likely be dependent on somebody other than us if you need help with it. (Probably you could get some help on this list, though.)
As far as I can recall, Pipermail never been especially recommended over 3rd party solutions like MHonArc or external services like mailarchive.com, it's just easy to use because it's guaranteed to be there, we provide support for it, and it turned out to be "good enough" for an awful lot of lists.
Regards, Steve